


Plonk!

by stereolightning (phalaenopsis)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-09 23:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12899376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phalaenopsis/pseuds/stereolightning
Summary: A silly short scene about how Neville's parents get together.





	Plonk!

“You've looked better, Alice,” Frank says, looking up from the piano in the Gryffindor common room as she jogs back in from running laps around the Quidditch pitch at the crack of dawn.

She is tiny and sweaty and almost out of breath. “Shut up, Longbottom,” she pants, doubling over and stretching her calves, her hands touching the carpet. Her whole body is spattered with mud.

A moment later, the portrait hole bursts open and the Gryffindor Quidditch team gambols in, also sweaty and very dirty. The new chaser, something Potter, Frank thinks his name might be, is there, looking awfully cocksure for a skinny thirteen-year-old boy with glasses.

“Bloody hell, she did overtake us,” says the Potter boy.

“By a full minute, it seems,” says Frank, amused.

The players stumble off to have baths, but Alice isn't on the team, so she stays there, in the middle of the common room, stretching and still breathing a bit hard.

“What are you doing chasing those sods when the sun is hardly up?”

“Training,” she says. “To be an Auror.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Oh. You don't have to train until they take you, you know. You just have to get the right NEWTs. I'm sort of in the same boat, as it were.”

She stands up straight and crosses her arms. She is strangely intimidating, for such a small, bookish girl. “I'm five foot two and I have asthma. They're not exactly lining up to throw me in front of dark wizards. Not everyone looks like you, you great tall wanker. And, in case you didn't notice, they were chasing me.”

He opens his mouth to speak but can't think of anything to say. Maybe she's right. While he's been coasting along on privilege and, well, height, she's been wearing herself out, planning for the future. And, now he thinks about it, she has gotten rather more... fit.

“Thing is, they haven't taken anybody on for two years running. And if I don't get in, I don't know what the hell else to do. There is no backup plan,” she sighs. “God, they'll take you in a heartbeat. I mean, just look at you. You look like Michelangelo's bloody David. Only more English.”

He's suddenly acutely aware of his body, and the fact that she is not only looking at it and talking about it but has clearly looked at it and thought about it before. “Erm.”

“How are you doing on studying, by the way? I'm up to three hours a night,” she says.

“Alright, I think. Well, except I'm pants at Herbology. Black thumb. Sprout thinks I'm a total ingrate. I think I've killed about a hundred plants over the years. She'll be glad to see the back of me.”

“Too right, she will.” Her eyes land on the piano. “And what are you doing playing that thing before breakfast, then? Waking up all the ickle firsties?”

“No, I couldn't sleep. I thought maybe some Beethoven. You know. Would help. But it didn't.”

“Budge over,” she says. 

He does. She sits next to him.

“Okay, let's see it,” she says.

She's so warm and pushy and sweaty and he realizes with a thrill of strangely welcome panic that he's half in love with her. 

“Beethoven?” he asks.

“What do you want to play?”

“Well, I wanted to play drums, but Mum put a stop to that when I was seven.” 

“Ah. Yes. She is a bit bossy, isn't she? Still,” she says, flicking his hair in a casually intimate sort of way, “you came out alright.”

“Erm. Thanks.”

She grins an insane Cheshire cat grin. Her eyes glitter. “Are you going to snog me, or what?”

He smiles wryly back at her, mustering his coolness. “Yeah, alright. Bring that foul mouth over here.”

Her elbow plonks down on the keys, and as they kiss for the first time, there is a discordant non-harmony of C, C sharp, and D. His musical ear is deeply offended. And she smears mud all over his pyjamas.

Fortunately, he knows the password to the prefects' bathroom, which turns out to be convenient indeed.


End file.
